Another day dreaming of scuba …

Just finished reading an interesting story about the first few dives to the Monitor of the shore of the Carolinas. Read about the first female diver to the monitor, it’s history in the civil war. Still have to get to business about reading the Rescue Diver Manual. One thing that’s great right off the bat is that the first thing mentioned in the PADI recusue diver course is common sense. There’s so much of that lacking in today’s world and in so many other organizations they require things to be taught a certain way or it’s wrong. From the get go, PADI speaks to the fact that every situation is different and unique. You must assess the situation, think and make the best judgement based on what’s going on at that time.

Still need to look for a dry suit that will fit a really short person. Have had thoughts about somehow putting links to providers of short drysuits on iHeartScuba.com. It would be great to help short people connect with manufacturers that make dry suits for short people.

Also want to spend some time looking for great sticker providers  and providers of other items such as fun keychains and other gadets that could have diving logos on them.

Rescue Diver Reading Begins

So, the Rescue Diver PADI course begins. The first steps have been taken, course is signed up for and reading has begun. Just a few pages into the book, but it’s a start, once all of the book reading and knowledge reviews are complete, then the in classroom portion will begin. Since we live in an area with quite cold winter water (snow on the edges of lake Tahoe) a dry suit will be a must. Finding one that will fit someone short is quite the challenge.

The other challenge is to continue to work on iHeartScuba.com site and product sourcing. After a bit of a disapointment with the quality of one provider, it’s been tough to get momentum going. Should anyone reading this want to share some ideas or suggestions to get a great scuba site up & running … the feedback would be welcome! Or, if you’re simply someone who loves scuba diving and has some great ideas for products that you’d like to buy but have trouble finding, please share those too.

Today’s hope … that I can make iHeartScuba.com take off & be a fantastic site with great value to scuba divers everywhere!

And so the new year begins … here’s to Scuba Diving in 2010

It’s January 5th, and there’s a new goal this year. Spending as much time blowing bubbles underwater is it. Going to take steps the first steps in a long process to become a dive instructor this week. First, have to become a dive master. Will get going on that right away. Starting with a Rescue class and whatever medical CPR or EMT related things as well.

Also, going to really get working on the iHeartScuba.com website as it’s fallen by the wayside in the last month. Holidays and other distractions got in the way. Not sure if we can find a good drop shipping source for T-Shirts, but still working on it. We thought we had a great company to provide products for us, but after ordering one of the T-shirts ourselves, we were disappointed with the quality of the material. The printing of the scuba image we used was very good, unfortunately the T-Shirt didn’t meet what we wanted for quality. We’ll keep looking and soon enough we’ll have products to sell on iHeartScuba.com.

We’d love to hear from you if you know of any good quality drop shippers to work with. Or companies that produce high quality T-shirts at a reasonably low manufacturing cost.

Looking forward to diving the Sea of Cortez

We have a trip booked to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in a few months.  In preparation for the trip I’ve been looking at some exciting dive sites. 

I’m very keen on trying to make it out to the Gordo Banks, which is a really deep dive.  Gordo Banks is a sea mount, which basically means it’s an underwater mountain range where the peaks never rising out of the water.  The dive site for Gordo banks is around 115 deep.  If we’re lucky, the hammerhead sharks will be schooling!

The other divesite that is high on my list is Cabo Pulmo.  Cabo Pulmo is the only living coral reef on the Pacific side of Central America.  In all my dives I still have not gotten the chance to swim with a whaleshark – so maybe this trip will be my time to encounter one.

Looking forward to teaching again

It’s been about a month since I’ve done any teaching.  I love working in the pool with new students and also doing scuba refreshers for divers that have been out of the water for a while.  It looks like this weekend I’ll get to the chance to work with a new class.  Working with students also helps me think of new and different scuba themed products to add at iHeartScuba.com.  A pool full of brand-new enthusiastic divers is a great source of inspiration. 

We’ve come up with some really good ideas so far – now it’s just a matter of getting the site up and running and also working out the product details.  We can’t wait to get everything on-line and ready for you all to browse.  It’s a long process, but I have to say it’s really a lot of fun learning what all goes into building a new site from scratch.   Stay tuned…

Designed a New Public Safety Diver Shirt

Things are starting to come together nicely for our new iHeartScuba.com website.  Today we worked on the shopping cart and designed a few new scuba diving t-shirt products.

We don’t have it posted to the site yet, but one of my favorite new shirts is the new public safety diver shirt.  On the front there is a small dive flag on the breast with ‘Public Safety Diver’ written inside the white slash.  Then on the back is a drawing of a public safety diver wearing a Kirby Morgan Superlite hard hat.  We’ll have all of these scuba diving products available soon!

There are a lot of scuba diving t-shirts out there, so we’re hoping to provide products that are unique or hard to find.  Great gift ideas for a specialty diver such as Cave Diver, Divemaster, Instructor, Public Safety Diver, Cavern Diver, Lake Diver, Mountain Diver, Altitude Diver, and Rescue Diver.

What do scuba diving and snowboarding/skiing have in common?

It snowed 2 days ago in the Sierra Nevada mountains and Tahoe got 12 inches of the new snow. We went snowboarding for the first time this season at Boreal. It was fun! Snowboarding, skiing, and scuba diving can turn into really expensive habits!

Luckily buying a fun scuba diving t-shirt or key chain is a very inexpensive way to please a diver! We will have plenty of gifts under $10 for anyone who loves scuba diving. Some good gift ideas for any scuba diver include a heart shaped dive flag sticker, a mouse pad with dive flag, a key chain with their dive specialty, a funny diving sticker or magnet.

So, it’s the end of nice weekend that went by too fast. We brainstormed more i heart scuba product ideas and picked out a web hosting company! Wooo Whooo!!

We’re still working on designing our own heart logo and still looking for an artist who can produce a logo we’re just crazy about. We’ve been drawing scuba diving dudes and dudettes, and other little images that we plan to use on t-shirts, stickers, mouse pads, cups, mugs, tote bags, alarm clocks, wall clocks and more.  We have drawn some images of scuba divers with tanks, next we have to draw some sketches of specialty scuba divers … hmmm, how to do that?

Top 10 Dive Sites – Australia

According to Sport Diver Magazine (December, 2009 issue) the top 10 scuba diving sites in Australia are: 

1. North Horn, Osprey Reef – Look for hammerhead sharks!
2. Cod Hole, Ribbon Reefs – Famous for potato cod
3. The SS Yongala – Awesome wreck, ranks among top wreck dives worldwide
4. The Bommie, Heron Island – Watch for manta rays and turtles
5. Balls Pyramid, Lord Howe Island – Lots of rays and sharks
6. The SS Nord, Tasmania – This is a DEEP dive (100 – 120 feet)
7. Piccaninnie Ponds, South Australia – Fresh water dive with amazing visibility
8. Pissy Boy Rock, Kangaroo Island – Also one of the best scuba dive site names, ever!
9. Ningaloo Reef, Western Oz – Great dive site to watch whale sharks
10. Navy Pier, Western Australia – Man made reef, a must dive in Western Australia

Now, who wants to come and dive Australia with us?

i love scuba tshirts …

How many “i love scuba” or “i heart scuba” shirts are out there? We wonder. We’ve been researching various designs and ideas to see what scuba diving shirts and product goodies are currently available. We’re sure we can offer unique new tshirt designs and other fun products for scuba divers. There are several i heart scuba products out there already. We look forward to offering some great scuba diving t-shirts with various designs. Get ready to see a fun collection of scuba diving promotional items and “i love scuba diving” products at iheartscuba.com!

We have especially observed that some items are hard to find and want to offer items for specialty scuba diving. For example, Ice Diver  and Ice Diving Stickers, Cave Diver and Cave Diving Stickers, Rescue Diver Stickers, Dive Master Stickers, Scuba Diving Stickers for all sorts of interests. We’ll have it all for you soon!

Almost time to go ice diving

Some really cold weather moved into the Sierra Nevada Mountains this week. We can’t wait for Prosser Lake (Truckee, California) to freeze over so that we can do some ice diving.  Sierra Diving Center (Reno, Nevada) will be offering another Ice Diver specialty course this winter.  It should be a lot of fun!

If you have any experience with scuba diving under the ice, or have taken the Ice Diver specialty course, we’d love to hear from you.  Once we get the iHeartScuba.com site up and running there will be some really cool (pun fully intended) Ice Diver specialty items available for sale.  Stay tuned for more updates on the site and our new products…